Einar Thorsen

Professor of Journalism and Communication at Bournemouth University

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Google nails Express sites over paid links

24 May, 2010 by Einar Thorsen Leave a Comment

Malcolm Coles:

Google says it has "taken action" and no longer trusts links from a major UK newspaper group – apparently referring to the Daily Express website.

In April, an Express Group email was made public offering links in online "SEO editorials" from £1,000 – with the aim of improving search engine rankings.

Such paid links are against Google's "terms of service" – and the Express (and OK) site initially suffered a page rank penalty in Google's toolbar (ie not much of a punishment at all).

But Google has now gone further, according to an interview with Google's search quality team at Digital Inspiration.

[…]

The only incident I know of recently in the UK is the Express case – so Matt Cutts appears to be saying the Express site (and presumably OK site) are no longer trusted.

Whatever your views on outing SEO tactics, this would be a fairly severe penalty for not using nofollow on paid links if carried forward.

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Del.ici.us tags: malcolmcoles google dailyexpress seo advertorial pagerank termsofservice

Filed Under: Links Tagged With: advertorial, dailyexpress, Google, malcolmcoles, pagerank, seo, termsofservice

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